Heavy Circle

Mostly a shape, with two official jobs. On its own ⭘ is a ring, an empty slot or a bullet that stands out more than ○. It is a text character, not an emoji, so most apps draw it in the colour and size of the surrounding text rather than as a picture.

Its best-known job is on electronics: in the international IEC symbols for equipment, a circle means "off", and Unicode lists ⭘ as that power-off sign. Its partners are ⏽ (a line, "on") and ⏻ (the line breaking into the circle, the familiar power button).

You may also know circles from Japan and Korea, where an ordinary circle marks a correct answer or "yes" against a cross ✕. That habit belongs to circles in general; ⭘ is not the usual character for it, though a reader there may well read it that way.

Where does this character come from?

It came from a Japanese broadcasting standard, as a map symbol. Unicode took ⭘ from ARIB STD-B24, Japan's specification for digital broadcasting, among its dictionary and map symbols. Japanese maps draw a town or village office as a single circle and a city office as a double circle, so ⭘ and its sibling ⭗ (a heavy circle with a circle inside) cover both. Outside Japanese maps that origin is invisible; readers just see a ring.